Remember Bitcoin?

Lots of hilarity over the past few weeks. The largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox (Magic The Gathering Online Exchange) has shut down and filed for bankruptcy after claiming to have lost 750,000 bitcoins belonging to cusomers with a "value" of around $500 Million at current prices. So now they've set up a "call center" to assure their customers that everything is going to be OK, with predctable results.

SiliconANGLE attempted to call the hotline on two occasions but our calls were unanswered. Meanwhile, Simon Sharwood of The Registerclaims
that he did manage to get through on one occasion, only to be answered
by a Japanese woman who apologized for her limited English skills and
asked him to call back later.

SiliconANGLE attempted to call the hotline on two occasions but our calls were unanswered. Meanwhile, Simon Sharwood of The Registerclaims
that he did manage to get through on one occasion, only to be answered
by a Japanese woman who apologized for her limited English skills and
asked him to call back later.

Given the general competence around bitcoin exchanges, they probably posted the wrong phone #.

And even if they posted the correct phone #, they accidentally dropped the phone in the toilet, and are currently busy dismantling the building's plumbing so that when they flush the toilet, the phone will fall out of the open pipes. (And don't worry, the phone hasn't been flushed away yet, they can see it RIGHT THERE in the bowl).

Of course they'll have disconnected the wrong pipe, the phone will get flushed away anyways, and the plumber they hired will get a face full of shit for his troubles. Plus he'll be paid in bitcoins, but I repeat myself.

To say that it was "deliberately designed to foster criminal activity" is simply not correct. Yes, the way that bitcoin works lends itself to criminal activity much better than other currency -- it's much easier to pass around millions of dollars of bitcoins instead of using suitcases full of cash. But that's just a side effect and not the original intent.

Althought there are people using bitcoin for illegal activities, just as there are people using cash to buy drugs and hire hitmen, the biggest use of bitcoin seems to be speculation -- buying/selling bitocon on exchanges in hopes of making money. To me the funniest part is all the people who said that bitcoin is wonderful because it is completely unregulated and free from control by TEH EVIL GOVERMENT and now that alll their bitcoins have been stolen they want to sue. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. You wanted unregulated, you got it.

To me the funniest part is all the people who said that bitcoin is wonderful because it is completely unregulated and free from control by TEH EVIL GOVERMENT and now that alll their bitcoins have been stolen they want to sue. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. You wanted unregulated, you got it.

Given the general competence around bitcoin exchanges, they probably posted the wrong phone #.

Not all bitcoin exchanges are incompetent you know.

MtGox was a piece of shit from the beginning. Anyone who willingly kept their money there was an idiot. Just like people using btc-e today, a Russian (apparently) exchange poorly translated into English, with absolutely no information of who owns it, where is it located, incomplete API documentation and no details about any kind of security practices. But I'd be willing to bet money that Kraken, Coinbase or bitcoin-central won't get hacked in the following years.

Quick math time! There are right now [url="http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc"]12469700.00000000 bitcoins in circulation[/url]. 1 Bitcoin is worth $576, best I can determine. So all bitcoins in total are worth aboot $7 billion. MtGOX managed to lose $500million, or roughly 7% of the entire net value of the entire Bitcoin economy.

So-- it's a coinflip if you'll get an incompetent exchange-- incompetent to the point where they can almost literally accidentally lose a tenth of the economy.

...

Actually, when I put it that way, I think they have a better track record than banks. {topical rimshot}

To me the funniest part is all the people who said that bitcoin is wonderful because it is completely unregulated and free from control by TEH EVIL GOVERMENT and now that alll their bitcoins have been stolen they want to sue. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. You wanted unregulated, you got it.

How does "unregulated" equate to "can't sue?"

I never said they can't sue. Anyone can sue anyone else for any reason, no matter how wrong or stupid. But that's not the point. Laws, courts and lawsuits are a form of regulation. If you want something that's completely unregulated, it's hypocritical to atttempt to use regulations to complain when things don't work out so well.

It reminds me of a joke a comedian once told while talking about his past drug use: "Here's a word of advice. If you give a hooker money to go buy coke, she will never come back with the coke."

As far as I'm concerned, all lawsuits pertaining to this matter should be immediately thrown out of court and stamped with the following:

To me the funniest part is all the people who said that bitcoin is wonderful because it is completely unregulated and free from control by TEH EVIL GOVERMENT and now that alll their bitcoins have been stolen they want to sue. Sorry, you can't have it both ways. You wanted unregulated, you got it.

How does "unregulated" equate to "can't sue?"

I never said they can't sue. Anyone can sue anyone else for any reason, no matter how wrong or stupid. But that's not the point. Laws, courts and lawsuits are a form of regulation. If you want something that's completely unregulated, it's hypocritical to atttempt to use regulations to complain when things don't work out so well.

It reminds me of a joke a comedian once told while talking about his past drug use: "Here's a word of advice. If you give a hooker money to go buy coke, she will never come back with the coke."

As far as I'm concerned, all lawsuits pertaining to this matter should be immediately thrown out of court and stamped with the following:

I never said they can't sue. Anyone can sue anyone else for any reason, no matter how wrong or stupid. But that's not the point. Laws, courts and lawsuits are a form of regulation. If you want something that's completely unregulated, it's hypocritical to atttempt to use regulations to complain when things don't work out so well.

It reminds me of a joke a comedian once told while talking about his past drug use: "Here's a word of advice. If you give a hooker money to go buy coke, she will never come back with the coke."

As far as I'm concerned, all lawsuits pertaining to this matter should be immediately thrown out of court and stamped with the following:

Uh...OK. I guess if pro-bitcoin arguments don't make sense, there's no need for anti-bitcoin arguments to make sense either. It's like being on Spengo.

Look, I'm not a libertarian, I don't think less regulation is inherently good and I don't think bitcoin is "a tool to fight the oppression of the government" or whatever you heard it called. But is really it so hard to imagine a system where there is less regulation but it's still illegal to steal?

But is really it so hard to imagine a system where there is less regulation but it's still illegal to steal?

Is it really so hard to understand that "illegal to steal" is completely meaningless without enforcement. And meaningful enforcement is impossible without extensive, complex regulation that covers every possible situtation. Nobody is arguing that stealing is OK. And nobody wants too much regulation. However, the argument of "the law doesn't specifically prohibit doing [this] in [that] situation" has been used succesfully many times and has allowed people to get away with things that are morally or ethically wrong.

But is really it so hard to imagine a system where there is less regulation but it's still illegal to steal?

Is it really so hard to understand that "illegal to steal" is completely meaningless without enforcement. And meaningful enforcement is impossible without extensive, complex regulation that covers every possible situtation. Nobody is arguing that stealing is OK. And nobody wants too much regulation. However, the argument of "the law doesn't specifically prohibit doing [this] in [that] situation" has been used succesfully many times and has allowed people to get away with things that are morally or ethically wrong.

Quite so.

There's a tendency among the ideologically inclined to look upon the idea of law as analogous either to a blacklist of prohibited activities, or a whitelist of permitted ones. The committed libertarian will naturally gravitate more toward the blacklist view, seeing it as the "only real alternative" to a whitelist's necessary base assumption of zero inherent liberty with specific freedoms permitted; examine any passionate libertarian argument and you'll find not much in it but reaction against what amounts to just such an assumption.

But the law is more complicated than that. It has to be, because human activity is so incredibly varied that the edge cases for any such list - black or white - would outnumber the clearcut cases so thoroughly as to make the list useless on its face. Which is exactly why we have this huge legal infrastructure devoted to virtually Talmudic deconstruction of every single case at trial, just to figure out which law actually applies.

What is the essential feature of any given activity that makes it count as theft? Is it the removal of that which is stolen? Then DMCA breaches are not theft. Is it the lost opportunity to sell that which the putative theft has made available for free? Then they are. And so on and so forth for every conceivable perceived wrong.

The libertarian program relies heavily on the idea that people, if left to their own devices and freed from the nanny state, would just work things out between themselves. Which kind of ignores the to-me obvious fact that the "nanny" state is exactly and precisely the outcome of millions of people collectively having done and continuing to do that very thing.

The libertarian program relies heavily on the idea that people, if left to their own devices and freed from the nanny state, would just work things out between themselves. Which kind of ignores the to-me obvious fact that the "nanny" state is exactly and precisely the outcome of millions of people collectively having done and continuing to do that very thing.

As a non-American, the idea of the U.S.-government as some form of "nanny" state, or over-regulated beast, strikes me as rather ridicolous, and joins "liberal media bias" or "fedora-beard crypto-activists" on the list of buzzwords that have somehow managed to become accepted into mainstream society purely by existing.

America needs more regulation starting with harder limits on the amount of rat feces your cereal can legally contain.

However, the argument of "the law doesn't specifically prohibit doing [this] in [that] situation" has been used succesfully many times and has allowed people to get away with things that are morally or ethically wrong.

The jocular saying is that, in England, "everything which is not forbidden is allowed", while, in Germany, the opposite applies, so "everything which is not allowed is forbidden". This may be extended to France — "everything is allowed even if it is forbidden" — and Russia where "everything is forbidden, even that which is expressly allowed". While in North Korea it is said that "everything that is not forbidden is compulsory"

SiliconANGLE attempted to call the hotline on two occasions but our calls were unanswered. Meanwhile, Simon Sharwood of The Registerclaims
that he did manage to get through on one occasion, only to be answered
by a Japanese woman who apologized for her limited English skills and
asked him to call back later.

Given the general competence around bitcoin exchanges, they probably posted the wrong phone #.

And even if they posted the correct phone #, they accidentally dropped the phone in the toilet, and are currently busy dismantling the building's plumbing so that when they flush the toilet, the phone will fall out of the open pipes. (And don't worry, the phone hasn't been flushed away yet, they can see it RIGHT THERE in the bowl).

Of course they'll have disconnected the wrong pipe, the phone will get flushed away anyways, and the plumber they hired will get a face full of shit for his troubles. Plus he'll be paid in bitcoins, but I repeat myself.

Are you of the opinion that the FDA has strong regulations? Do you think they enforce these limits well? Are the consequences of enforcement particularly strong?

Comparably I'd anwer all of these with no.

Some of their regulations strike me as "strong." Many as silly and unnecessary, and probably others that would be useful are missing. There are many "strong" consequences. You already admitted your ignorance of the US, you don't need to keep demonstrating it.

The libertarian program relies heavily on the idea that people, if left to their own devices and freed from the nanny state, would just work things out between themselves. Which kind of ignores the to-me obvious fact that the "nanny" state is exactly and precisely the outcome of millions of people collectively having done and continuing to do that very thing.

There's some truth in that, but there's probably more BS. The sheer volume of stuff that gets churned out with the force of law is enough to make sure we all violate several laws and regulations every day and that no one could possibly keep track of it all. I cannot believe this should be considered a "feature."

Jonah Goldberg wrote a column about hidden law (a term he got from Jonathan Rauch...and more about that in his email newsletter thing) that addressed the difference between people working things out for themselves based on things like cultural norms vs codified laws and regulations.

A soft communitarian is a person who maintains a deep respect for what I call “hidden law”: the norms, conventions, implicit bargains, and folk wisdoms that organize social expectations, regulate everyday behavior, and manage interpersonal conflicts.

America needs more regulation starting with harder limits on the amount of rat feces your cereal can legally contain.

You mean there aren't enough already? (URL Referenced in the article is 404'd, but the full list may be found here)

And speaking of unregulated shit contamination, way link to Huffington Post. At least you provided a link to the actual source, but come ffs, you might as well link to a Slashdot summary of a guy's blog post about an article he read on TMZ about a celebrity's Wikipedia page whose main citation is a tweet.

And meaningful enforcement is impossible without extensive, complex regulation that covers every possible situtation.

Sorry, but that is, indeed, very difcult for me to understand. How does the MtGox situation differs from any other corporation that was stealed or commited fraud (depending on the actual facts)against their creditors? And what does bitcoin not being regulated (WTF does that mean?) changes anything?

You know the best part about the whole bitcoin thing? That it's deliberately designed to foster criminal activity, and yet people still seem surprised every time criminal use it.

And yes, "hiding your money from the government" is criminal. It may be a morally justified or principled form of criminal activity, but that's what it is.

Is cash deliberately designed to foster criminal activity?

It seems like you could stash cash in a mattress as easily as you could stash USB sticks with private keys.

Bitcoin is basically designed to avoid government regulations. Cash is not.

Bitcoin is only designed to be a currency; a form of cash that is not backed by any bank or nation and does not rely on the economic stability of any bank or nation.

Bitcoin can be regulated just like any other currency. Governments can regulate anything they want. Chinese yen are regulated. You can't trade large amounts of Chinese yen for dollars or dollars for chinese yen in the USA without the Feds getting all up in your grill about it. If the US government considers bitcoin to be an international currency it is already regulated. In Florida there are already people in trouble like that.

Wow, it's almost as if I posted that exact link yesterday but... but surely that can't be. Because then why would Ender be posting it again now?

I like this because no matter which side of that thread you identify with (and there are many), you can point to the other sides as idiots, though mostly the idiots are the people who think that libertarian is a synonym for anarchist.

And what does bitcoin not being regulated (WTF does that mean?) changes anything?

It limits the number of legal remedies somewhat; with a standard currency, there's a whole range of specialised regulations that apply to just currency shenanigans (though which government cracks down on you may vary according to which currency you're dealing with). Bitcoin has to use general law (as applied to digital artefacts) instead.

My loyalty is to Washington State before it's to the Federal United States Government. All of my day-to-day government interactions are with the State. The Feds provide... uh... tax forms? Is basically the only thing they do I directly experience.

My loyalty is to Washington State before it's to the Federal United States Government. All of my day-to-day government interactions are with the State. The Feds provide... uh... tax forms? Is basically the only thing they do I directly experience.

Things aren't nearly as simple as you think.

Most[citation needed] European countries are divided into regions/parishes/state-like constructs. They are often as varied as the US states in terms of cultures, dialects, and rules. Don't pretend that I'm the one who's oversimplifying.

Also, most people who have day-to-day "interactions" with a government entity are criminals.

My loyalty is to Washington State before it's to the Federal United States Government. All of my day-to-day government interactions are with the State. The Feds provide... uh... tax forms? Is basically the only thing they do I directly experience.

Although many people probably directly interact with the postal service (which is federal) more than any other government entity.

Why do people constantly compare the US (a single country) to Europe (a continent)? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare Europe to North America? Or the US to individual countries?

Better yet, why can't people just say "Oh, I prefer $country, so I'll go live there.", and stop acting like a bunch of land-bound serfs?

I actually have seriously considered moving to England, I just can't get my girlfriend on board with the idea (there's a lot of jobs in her field in this area). I know I'm going to come across as one of those East Coast Liberal weenies, but I can't imagine living in the vast majority of the US (I'm lookin' at you, Ben L). And that's even after the New England winters.